[dandelany]

Yeah Bitcoin is such an interesting exception! I think some ideas are viral enough on their own to go from zero to front-page on HN/reddit/etc. even when posted by an anonymous user - but it's rare to go beyond that, they usually run out of momentum.

Bitcoin had a few things going for it - the whitepaper is concise and well-explained, in perfect academic prose and typeset in LaTEX, which lends it an air of credibility. It came with an implementation, so hackers could experiment with it immediately, plus it sort of has implicit libertarian anti-government undertones, both of which encouraged follow-on blog posts.

Once the ball got rolling, another kind of heuristic took over - the money heuristic. People put money into the thing, which made other people go "oh look at how much money they put in, this is a real serious investment thing!" and put in their money, in a sick feedback loop that continues to this day...